This will be our first year away from the UK since buying the house,it’s also after many year of labour warm and habitable. We shall miss our grand children big time as we have always spent the holiday with them. We have dug out the decorations from a long forgotten box,Kate has made a start putting them up. Also my “Secret Santa” present arrived today,yippee so who ever you were thank you.
So from Kate and I we wish you all a very merry Christmas great new year. Stay safe and warm x
We have spent the majority of our last 28 Christmases in France, most of those as non-residents. We have two children and we came to France as my mother was here and although we had siblings in the UK it was, compared with other families (we presumed, though perhaps not) a bit of an anti-climax. So almost every Christmas we took the ferry from the south coast and drove down through France. For many years this meant driving on A roads (or smaller), not motorways, through every town and village which now have almost certainly have a bypass. I am telling you this because as soon as we Crossed the channel we were in a different world - especially when the sun went down. If a community had any decorations up they were perhaps a string of white lights around the church or across a road, a giant wrapped sweet here and there - and that was it! And when we arrived at our house in the dark with no street lights for several hundred metres we loved it. The children loved it and knew no difference! So they were happy with their simple decorated tree, small stockings hung by the stove and their presents which inflation and years barely changed in monetary value. We now live here but still have a house in the UK so this year we gave them both the choice here or the UK? Despite now having to make their own way here, this is where they love to spend Christmas, but boy have the decorations in the towns and villages changed in very recent years. For the better........I am not so sure! But, yes, it is starting to feel like Christmas but we used to wait till we arrived soon after 20th to feel that way.
Hi Bryan, hope you have a good one. This will be my 12th xmas in France, and the 12th xmas without my family. It is not quite the same without them, but I try to make the most of it :-) Happy Christmas!
Welcome to the Good Life, Bryan & Kate. Merry one to you both and for long years after !